It was perfect timing. A friend upstate was renovating her house, involving constant noise and piles of sawdust, which would not have been ideal for two 10 lb. shih tzus. So the Misses Minnie and Charlotte became my roommates for nearly a year. And as they needed to be walked three times a day, I became The Masked Hatter of the Upper West Side, and actually enjoyed wearing scores of masks with my extensive hat collection. I began to take selfies (rarely with the dogs in the picture as it was too difficult to capture) and my excursions eventually transmogrified into a book and museum exhibits. So the borrowed dogs and pandemic masking ended up being strangely beneficial. And Minnie and Charlotte and I would encouraged unmasked teenagers to mask up! You might enjoy these two stories about masking in New York.

https://medium.com/the-orange-journal/my-upper-west-side-874cf08da542

https://sobieski-thearteconomist-9642.medium.com/the-masked-hatter-ff6c06ff6a67